“Come on guys! I said let’s move.”
Michael tucked the rifle into its sheath and lay it down carefully on the bed of the truck next to his assault rifle and company-issued pulse rifle. When he returned to the front of the pickup, the boys were still staring into the distance.
“Guys?”
“Dad, what is that?” David asked, pointing to the sky.
Michael squinted and followed the boy’s finger. Just below the cloud line, six tiny black dots were flying across the horizon. Michael could tell from a distance that they were X90s, the air force’s response to Russia’s newest stealth fighters. Unlike previous models, the X90s were small. Just large enough for a single pilot. They were the last of their kind in a military taken over by drones.
Shielding his eyes, Michael studied the jet formation. They had likely taken off from Holloman Air Force Base and appeared to be flying toward the spaceport.
But why the hell would they be doing that?
He looked down at his radio expecting to see a missed message from Blair, but the screen was dark. The commander would have certainly informed him of a threat, wouldn’t he?
Michael’s hand twitched nervously as he reached for the radio. With a single flick, he hit the relay button. White noise crackled over the com.
The signal was dead.
“Shit,” Michael whispered. He glanced over at Jeff and David, who were still fixated on the jets. Clipping the radio back on his belt, he took a deep breath. He had to get them back to base. With his radio down, Paula would be worried sick. And if there was something going on, he needed to get her and the kids off the base before returning to his post.
Michael shooed David toward the truck. “Get in,” he said sternly.
The boys both frowned but finally obeyed their father, climbing into the truck and exerting several groans.
Michael jumped in after them and started the engine. He ducked under the mirror to get one last look at the squadron of X90s. Every blink, the jets got closer. Based on their trajectory he had no doubt they were heading for the spaceport.
“You guys buckled in?” Michael asked, spinning to check on Jeff and David. They nodded, staring back at him with wide eyes.
“Hold on,” Michael said, his voice stern. He switched the truck into all-wheel drive with a flick of the control panel and pounded the gas pedal into the floor. The tread kicked up a cloud of sand. Twisting the steering wheel 360 degrees, he turned the truck toward the base.
Michael didn’t want to scare his boys, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized something was very wrong.
The country could be under attack.
The thought released a flow of adrenaline into his bloodstream. He’d made a promise to Paula that everything was going to be okay. A promise he fully intended to keep.
He focused on the road. Losing his cool now wouldn’t do them any good. He had to stay calm. Like a man possessed, his eyes darted from the sand ahead to the rearview mirror where he was tracking the jets. They were quickly catching up with the truck. In seconds the X90s would fly overhead.
Michael caught a glimpse of David and Jeff. David reached out for Jeff’s hand who took it in his own.
“It’s going to be okay guys. We’ll be back soon. Safe and sound,” Michael said in the most reassuring voice he could muster. As he shifted his focus, something flashed in the rear mirror just above David’s head.
A second later another flash caught his attention. Were the jets changing course?
“What on earth . . .” Michael eased the truck to a stop and spun to look out the back window. One by one the X90s began to shake violently. Their noses then turned a sharp ninety degrees and dove toward the sand below—directly at Michael and his boys.
“Oh my god,” he said, slamming his foot against the pedal again. This time the engine puttered, shook, and died. He flicked the start button, but there was no response. The truck was dead.
A sinking feeling gripped Michael’s gut, anxiety rushing through his body. For the first time in years, he felt the intoxicating fear of war.
“Dad?” Jeff shouted.
Michael snapped back into motion. He didn’t need to turn around to see what the boy was looking at. Six jets were headed right for them. Ticking time bombs that were about to rain down fiery hell if he didn’t get his kids out of there.
Jumping out of the truck he rushed to the backseat, grabbed Jeff’s hand, and yanked him onto the sand. The boy fell to his knees while Michael reached back in for David. Out of his peripheral vision, he could see the black jets spiraling through the sky. He didn’t have much time.
“Come on David!” Michael yelled. The boy was curled up against the other door crying. There was no way Michael was going to get him to move without force. Sliding on his stomach he grabbed David’s hand and pulled him across the seat.
Holding the whimpering child in his arms, Michael turned just in time to see the first X90 crash into a sand dune a few thousand feet away. The jet exploded in a poof of flames, sending red-hot shards of glass and metal soaring through the air.
An incredible wave of heat engulfed Michael before he had a chance to react. By the time he dropped to shield his boys, he could smell burning hair. The ground shook as he draped his body over Jeff and David, the skin on his back burning from the overwhelming heat of the explosion.
Several more short quakes rippled through the ground as the other jets began smashing into the sand around them. Michael risked a short glance behind them just in time to see a wing sailing through the air. He closed his eyes and pulled the boys closer.
CHAPTER 6
DR. Hoffman felt surprisingly relaxed. With the Secundu Casu free of the mesosphere, they had made it through one of the biggest hurdles of the flight. Now all they had to do was avoid the armada of alien ships heading for the planet.
The holographic interface displayed the Secundu Casu’s current trajectory. They were now in the thermosphere, orbiting the Earth until the pilots could plot a new course around the alien threat.
He scanned the diagnostic reports again. The quantum propulsion engines were one hundred percent functional and the centrifuge tucked deep inside the ship’s hull was producing near-Earthlike gravity.
Dr. Hoffman smiled. The Secundu Casu was operating better than he ever imagined. A fantastic victory in a day that was turning out to otherwise be a disaster.
A few feet away, Amy moaned. She had thrown up several times during the flight and was not adapting well to the artificial habitat. Dr. Hoffman had made it a point to get time in NTC’s simulated environment for at least thirty minutes a day, but even that hadn’t prepared him for the real thing. He was just relieved all the technology was performing properly. If the artificial-gravity centrifuge hadn’t worked, then the ship’s biomes would be worthless and his crew of fifty handpicked personnel from around the world wouldn’t last more than a week. Dr. Hoffman knew how fragile the systems were and, presuming the ship could slip past the aliens, they still had six months of flight before they would reach Mars.
Dr. Hoffman reached over for Amy’s hand, stopping just shy of touching her. “Are you going to be okay?”
She faked a smile and then gagged, dry heaving into a tube that sucked the liquid into an opening below her seat.
Modern technology, Dr. Hoffman thought, trying not to grin. It had cured cancer, created artificial intelligence, and taken humanity to the stars, but could it save them from an alien race? He’d gambled fifty trillion of NTC’s bankroll on the construction of the biospheres, the Secundu Casu, the Sun Spot, the Van Allen, and the facility on Mars with the hope that it would.
So far it was money well spent, Dr. Hoffman mused.
“What are you hearing over the net?” he asked Tim.
The bald man shifted his skinny tie uncomfortably. His small body shook noticeably. “We lost
contact with HQ shortly after we left the stratosphere. It doesn’t make any sense . . .”
Dr. Hoffman cleared his throat. “Makes perfect sense.”
Tim shifted his tie again. “What do you mean, sir?”
“The Organics have activated the same magnetic disturbance that caused the solar storms of 2055. I don’t imagine we’ll be hearing from anyone on Earth ever again.”
Amy threw up in her tube.
Dr. Hoffman focused on the blue screen. The feed had panned to an orbital shot of the planet. Somewhere beneath the cloud cover, Earth’s defenses were going dark. He could almost feel the terror gripping thousands of air force pilots as they lost control of their billion-dollar aircrafts and billions of citizens on the ground as they watched the ships rain down on their cities. But, the experience would be nothing compared to what those lucky enough to survive the first stage of the invasion would feel when they saw the black alien ships descend.
Yet, Dr. Hoffman felt no remorse. He had gone to great lengths to ensure the human race’s survival. The death of billions to save a population large enough to reproduce was, in his scientific opinion, worth the sacrifice.
* * *
Michael peeled back his eyelids but couldn’t manage to keep them cracked for more than a few seconds. His head was filled with a fog that he just couldn’t lift. His ears, his back, his legs; everything felt like it was being stabbed with tiny needles.
His body was on fire.
What had happened?
Reaching blindly in front of him, he attempted to crawl across the ground and felt soft grains of sand filter through his fingertips.
The desert.
The last thing he remembered was kissing Paula on the cheek before he left with the boys.
Panic replaced pain as he thought of Jeff and David.
Where are they?
Forcing his eyes open, he stared into a cloud of smoke and remembered the X90s. He remembered the explosions and the wing sailing through the air.
Michael stumbled frantically across the sand calling their names. “Jeff! David! Where are you?”
The pounding in his ears made it impossible to hear a response. He continued pushing himself forward, desperately searching for them. He ignored the stabbing pain racing through his body. He didn’t even want to see what his legs looked like. The smell of burning flesh told him enough.
After several seconds, the pounding in his ears lessened and the sound of muffled coughing broke through the hissing sand.
Thank god.
He froze, trying to get a location, but the blowing smoke made it nearly impossible to see.
“Jeff! David! Where are you?” he shouted again.
Then the tiniest of voices.
“Over here.”
Michael squinted into the wind, covering his mouth with his handkerchief.
There. Not five feet away were two small bodies lying in the sand. He rushed over to them and dropped down on his mechanical leg. It was then he saw the flesh hanging off his robotic joints. The skin around his ankle was seared black. He was either in shock or the artificial nerves had been severed.
“Guys!” he shouted, pulling away from the gory sight.
“Dad,” David cried.
“Are you okay? Does anything hurt?” Michael asked the boys as he searched David’s small body for injuries.
“I’m fine,” Jeff said. As a gust of wind cleared the smoke, Michael saw Jeff sit up and brush the sand off his jeans. The kid didn’t have a scratch on him.
Michael turned back to David who continued to whimper. He too looked free of any major injuries. Michael took a deep breath through his handkerchief and dropped on his butt.
“Dad, your leg,” Jeff cried out.
“I’ll be okay. It doesn’t hurt much.”
David stopped crying when he saw the mechanical parts inside his father’s leg. “Cool,” he sniffled. “You’re, like, Ironman.”
Michael tried to grin, but another surge of pain jolted his body. His leg had taken the brunt of the shrapnel, but his back had been cooked by the flames. The back of his shirt was stuck to his burnt skin.
He needed to get the boys back to the base before he went into shock. A wave of chills shook his body. He remembered the sensation from the moments after his leg had first been destroyed, before it had been replaced with mechanical parts. He’d never forget glancing down at his ruined muscles and ligaments, hanging from his bones like shredded meat.
Michael shook the thought away. He needed to concentrate and get his kids to safety. “Can you guys help me up?” he asked, attempting to stand. Jeff rushed over and grabbed him under the armpit.
“Thanks, bud,” Michael said in a soft voice. He didn’t want to scare the boys any more than they already had been. He needed them to be strong. Especially if he lost consciousness.
Michael scanned the wreckage for his pickup. He took a careful step over a twisted piece of metal and caught a glimpse of the flipped truck resting under the smoldering wing of one of the X90s. Even worse, somewhere beneath the scrap metal was his pack.
He scouted the best route through the debris. The landscape was peppered with black craters from where the jets had crashed, and the sand was covered in sheets of ash. Thick plumes of smoke swept across the terrain, further reducing his visibility.
“Boys,” he finally said. “I need you to listen very carefully. I need my pack. And in order to get it, I’m going to have to leave you both here.”
“Dad, no,” David blurted.
Michael put his hand on David’s shoulder. “It’s okay bud, I’ll be right back.” He glanced over at Jeff and winked at the older boy. “Don’t move,” he said firmly.
A few heartbeats later, Michael was navigating the minefield of warped metal. His injured leg creaked as he walked. The clicking sounds of his mechanical joints were no longer a figment of his imagination. This time, they were real.
By the time he got to the truck, a cloud of stars was racing across his vision. He blinked them away and scanned the wreckage for his pack. Without morphine, he could feel himself going into shock. And this was not the place he wanted to pass out. Gunpowder, jet fuel, and God knows what else the X90s were carrying meant the entire site could explode at any time. He didn’t want to be around when that happened.
Dropping to a knee he reached into his back pocket and removed a pair of gloves. He grimaced when the scorched skin on his back stretched further. A swift current of pain raced up his spine and was followed by a wave of dizziness.
Closing his eyes, he thought of Paula until the throbbing in his back subsided. She was counting on him. And so were Jeff and David.
Determined, Michael slipped on the gloves, pulled his handkerchief over his mouth, and dropped to his stomach. The gap between the wing and the crushed bed of the pickup was small, leaving just enough room for him to squeeze underneath.
Darkness shrouded him as he wiggled his way deeper underneath the rubble. He moved with his arms tucked tightly in front of him, compressing his body as the upside-down bed of the pickup narrowed.
Just a few more inches, he thought as he got closer.
The terrifying pop of one of the tires exploding filled the space before he could go any farther. He bit his lip and listened to the air hissing out of the destroyed rubber. It only took a moment for the tire to completely deflate. When the hissing stopped, a new sound replaced it. The sound of groaning metal.
Michael panicked as he felt the truck bed pushing down on him. The entire left side was being crushed by the wing. Without the support of the back tire he was going to be squashed—suffocated right in front of his boys.
Then he saw it. There, not a single foot in front of him was the tip of his pack, its straps protruding from the sand, so close he could see the frays in the tattered fabric.
He wanted desperat
ely to reach out for it, to grab it and escape, but Michael was too terrified to move.
When the metal finally came to a stop his face was inches away from the ground. He spat into the sand defiantly, grabbed his pack, and squirmed to his right where the other back tire was still holding up the wing. Michael began wiggling backward when he caught sight of something else.
His rifles.
He hesitated as the truck let out a terrible creak; the wing pushed the bed down another inch.
Don’t, Michael. There’s no time. You don’t need the rifles.
But what if the country is under attack? How would he protect his family?
Jeff’s distant voice broke over the whipping wind. “Dad! What are you doing?”
“Wait there! I’ll be back in a second,” Michael yelled. “Fuck,” he muttered to himself before he crawled forward again. He knew he was taking a stupid risk, but he’d seen enough disaster movies to know that he would regret not having the guns later.
Two breaths later, he was hugging the rifles against his chest and wiggling backward. When he was halfway out he heard the sound of the second tire pop.
“No!” he yelled. But it was too late. The right side of the pickup began to crush him into the sand.
He panicked again, his feet kicking violently outside the wreckage as the wing pushed the vehicle down against his upper body.
Before the rubble suffocated him, he felt two small hands wrap around his ankles and tug.
“No! Get out of here!” he screamed.
They pulled again. Harder this time, nearly taking off his boots. He tucked the rifles closer to his chest and closed his eyes.
Another yank and he was free. Without hesitation he rolled onto his back, and looked into his boys’ faces. Even through the dense smoke he could see they were both smiling.
Michael didn’t know what to say. His kids had just saved his life. Part of him wanted to scold the boys for not staying put, and part of him wanted to punish himself.
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